3 ms·
Ask HN: Does this exist? web Content Fact challenging. I Want to open source it
Does this tool exist yet in any form?
Users can submit any content from the web, print media, or their own uploaded media (i.e. a videotape of a speech) that they feel has a factual error
why? I get really frustrated when I see a blog post from years ago that has clear factual errors. These can arise for more reasons than I have time to mention but range from innocent typos and misunderstandings of a topic all the way up to clear conflicts of interest, conspiracy theories, propaganda and scams.
Unfortunately getting many of these issues fixed directly isn't feasible. The original creator may be impossible to reach, may resent being called out, may genuinely believe in their content, may be a scam artist, etc. Sometimes threads are locked or deleted, sometimes a dissenting voice is banned, and sometimes it exists in archives like archive.org where it's simply a record that isn't meant to be changed even if incorrect.
how it would work:
The page or social post or media link in question is spidered, the user highlights one or more factual issues and then provides contrary evidence. Other users can view the issue and agree or disagree with its merit. The submissions themselves can be submitted as well (meta), so there's no threaded messaging but always the opportunity to formally disagree.
The owner of the content is notified if their resource has been listed. Being listed is never in itself an indication of a factual misrepresentation, instead it provides a place for people to view evidence associated with content that someone has deemed questionable - and then use that evidence to come to their own conclusion.
links are noFollow so we don't send link juice to these sites.
- jacquesm 10y agoThere is something like this that allows collaborative annotation using post-it like bits using a plug in for FF. For the life of me I can't remember the name though. Wikialong or something like that, it provided a side-bar with stuff from a wiki to any web-page.
- newman8r 10y agoThis sounds fairly close to what I'm thinking - I'm sure someone else will see this and remember if you don't
- jacquesm 10y agoFound it: http://www.wikalong.org/ http://www.wikalong.org/
- newman8r 10y agoThanks, this looks like a nice tool. I'd like to see something with the specific purpose of saying "this thing on the web is wrong" rather than a catch-all but I am going to give this a closer look.
- jacquesm 10y agoI like your idea but I suspect that even more than wikipedia something like that would lead to endless shoutfests about who is right and who is wrong. The web is fast becoming a battle ground where it doesn't matter who is right or wrong but who can shout the loudest.
- newman8r 10y agoI wouldn't doubt it - some stuff is easy to agree on (an incorrect date, value, etc.), but when it comes to political and other topics, it's never a done deal. But I do think a place to report this stuff is nice. I can barely stand to visit reddit anymore - but even there, it's not the hardest task to identify some of the rational comments and check their veracity - thats essentially what I would be interested in.
- Piskvorrr 10y agoskeptics.stackexchange.com ?
- newman8r 10y agoThese appear to be mostly questions, the format I propose would be "This content___ contains a factual error {reference here}. It is incorrect because___ and this is supported by {insert reference}
- brudgers 10y agoI'm not sure a repository of incorrect information would improve the internet. Or maybe I should have said "another repository of incorrect information". Anyway, the trend is toward platforms that support editing to improve accuracy: e.g. Wikipedia and StackOverflow. That is it's less trouble to create a trusted source and get a good ranking in Google's page rank than to worry about XKCD386. Good luck.
- newman8r 10y agoThats an interesting way to look at it - I would not call it so much a repo of incorrect information, more a directory of information in dispute. I'm curious if anyone else ever sees clear errors on the web and gets frustrated about not being able to effectively call them out.